With just ten events left in this year’s World Series of Poker series, three more maiden winner’s bracelets have been won by professional players in their twenties.
David Peters (29) has a long list of live tournament and online high stakes accomplishments on his cv and over $12 million in career earnings, yet a WSOP bracelet has eluded him until this week, when he bested a field of 1,860 to win $412,557 and his first WSOP jewellery in the $1,500 buy-in NLHE competition.
It was far from his biggest win – Our readers may recall that that distinction goes to the $2.3 million second place finish he achieved in the 2016 WPTN $200,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Triton Super High Roller in the Philippines.
It’s been a good week for Peters – the day before his NLHE contest started he bagged a $393,120 win in the $25,000 buy-in High Roller tournament at The Aria!
He’s cashed on 38 occasions at WSOP and achieved six final tables over the years, so a bracelet was long overdue.
Peters entered the final table second in chips, but quickly accelerated the pace, eliminating two players and taking the lead right through to the three-handed stage, where he eliminated Matt Affleck at third for $184,456, going on to take a 3 to 1 advantage into the heads up against Irish pro Cathal Shine.
The finale came just a dozen hands later as Peters dismissed the Irishman without really breaking a sweat, urged on by a noisy group of railbird supporters as Shine headed off to collect his second placing prize of $254,890
Other final table cashes included:
Muhammad Abdel-Rahim – $134,845
Zachary Okin – $99,592
Brendan Sheehan – $74,321
Takuya Suzuki – $56,044
Kilian Kramer – $42,711
David Patterson – $32,900
In the $1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Split-8 or Better event it was online and live tourney pro David Nowakowski (28) who claimed his first World Series of Poker bracelet and the accompanying first prize of $203,113.
A Supernova player at Pokerstars, Nowakowski is originally from the USA but in recent years has lived and played abroad, only recently returning to the land of his birth. Revisiting WSOP after a couple of years away, he made his presence felt by topping a field of 732 to dominate the final table.
After eliminating bracelet holder Marco Johnson at third for $87,192, Nowakowski started the heads up with a solid chip advantage over his last opponent, Canadian Tim Vukson. It turned out to be a brief affair, with the Canadian only able to draw level at one point before going down to Nowakowski’s brand of aggressive poker and leaving the table to collect a runner-up prize of $125,507.
It took Nowakowski just 20 minutes to dispatch both Johnson and Vukson and claim the main prize and his first bracelet.
Other final tablers cashed:
James Alexander – $61,519
Kenneth Po – $44,094
Colin Gelker – $32,114
Stephen Johnson – $23,772
Martin Staszko – $17,890
Matt Lefkowitz – $13,691
Corey Thompson, a 27-year-old professional player from Florida earned his first World Series of Poker bracelet and the main prize of $221,163 in the $1,000 buy-in Turbo competition, which pulled in 1,397 entrants, creating a prize pool of $1,257,300 which enabled 210 finishers to cash.
The turbo structured format meant that the tournament incorporated 30 minute levels, instead of the usual hour long duration, but the final table still took 116 hands to complete, ending in a 60-hand, hour-long heads up between Thompson (who started holding a 3 to 1 chip lead) and German ace Enrico Rudelitz.
The German pro showed his mettle in staging a major comeback to take the lead at one point, but Thompson stuck to his guns and played back into the lead to finally take the game, leaving Rudelitz with a well-earned second placing pay day of $136,651.
The win was Thompson’s largest to date, eclipsing the $131,000 he claimed last year when he took down a Heartland Poker Tour competition.
Other final table cashes included:
William Liang $97,811
Darren Terazawa $70,821
Ankit Ahuja $51,878
Terry Fan $38,452
Matthew Chang $28,842
Ryan Pochedly $21,897
Benjamin Reinhart $16,827